Talking to Developers about Content

Following up on yesterday’s post, I’ll also be speaking at Confab Higher Ed in November.

 

I really enjoyed the conference last year: impressive keynotes; focused, carefully curated set of breakout talks; and a great crowd of motivated, inspired folks fighting the good fight to improve digital experiences for students, prospects, alumni, and faculty across the range of higher education.

My talk this year is “Engineering Influence: Talking to Developers about Content.” I’ve long said that Content Strategy folks need to exert more influence on technology and can’t just “stay out of the conversation” when it turns technical.

How do content people (those who come to the conversation fundamentally concerned with content production, quality, clarity, and experience) talk effectively with technical people (those who come to the conversation fundamentally concerned with a technical system perspective – what to build, maintain, or customize)?

This isn’t to say content strategy folks should try to take over technical architecture, or to give technical folks a pass on their need to care about content and user experience – just to give some tools / techniques for making that conversation more effective.